Vietnam real estate giants suffer after tough year

Vietnam's top 10 real estate investors in 2023 no longer include industry giants Novaland, BIM Land or Hung Thinh Land, according to Vietnam Report, a leading local ranking and research company.

The top 10 list this year includes Vinhomes, Nam Long, Ecopark, Khang Dien, Phat Dat, Ha Do Group, Phu My Hung, DIC, Van Phu Invest, and AnGia Group.

Nam Long is in the second position, replacing Novaland. Last year, Nam Long ranked fourth.

This year's ranking records new names, including Phu My Hung, Van Phu Invest and AnGia Group. Of these, Phu My Hung, which reported a profit of more than VND3.6 trillion ($153.54 million) in 2022, moved to the seventh position.

Khang Dien, Ha Do, and Phat Dat advance in the ranking compared to last year, while Vinhomes still ranks first, ever since 2019.

The companies were filtered out from the database of Vietnamese enterprises with financial data updated to December 31, 2022, the use of the Media Coding method (encoding press data in the media) and Vietnam Report surveys.

The list of top 10 industrial real estate investors in 2023 did not change compared to last year. Becamex IDC and VSIP, both leading developers of industrial townships in Vietnam, and Viglacera, also the country's leading producer of building materials, remain among the top three.

According to Vietnam Report, although many market segments have entered bottlenecks, industrial real estate is still a bright spot with an occupancy rate of 85% or more.

Due to strong demand from various sectors, the average occupancy rate of tier-1 markets in the north, including Hanoi, Hai Phong city, Hai Duong, Hung Yen, Bac Ninh province, reached 83.2% by the fourth quarter of 2022.

This segment in the southern region also made positive performance with manufacturing hubs Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai, Binh Duong, and Long An province recording an average occupancy rate of 90%.

A total 28.6% of industrial real estate companies said their revenue and profit grew by more than 15% compared to 2021.

Since the first quarter of this year, a series of investors have planned to open for sale many projects. Improved market excitement stems not only from the supply side but also demand. Interest in real estate products increased in most segments, especially land plots.

Real estate rose to the second position in attracting foreign direct investment in the quarter, with nearly $766 million in registered capital or 14.1% of the country's total.

Since April 2022, the market had gradually subsided with a decrease in purchasing power, first in the segment of rural land and land plots and then spreading to the mid and high-end apartment markets in large urban areas. The segments of serviced apartments, offices for rent, villas, townhouses, and resort real estate all recorded a significant decrease. This situation lasted until the end of 2022.

In addition, some business leaders were arrested for further investigation on charge of fraud or violations in information disclosure, driving insecurity across the whole market, causing many transactions to be delayed, and ongoing projects to suddenly stop. According to most experts, these difficulties are more serious than the force majeure factors from the pandemic.

According to the General Statistics Office, by the end of 2022, the number of real estate businesses dissolved was more than during the Covid-19 outbreak with nearly 1,200 companies. Meanwhile, the number of companies dissolved in pandemic years 2021 and 2020 was 861 and 978 respectively. In Q1/2023, 1,816 companies ceased business for a definite time and 341 dissolved.

To cope with the cash flow shortage, 55.2% of businesses surveyed by Vietnam Report chose to borrow from commercial banks, up 4.1% compared to the previous year. The proportion of companies expected to tighten their belts and reduce operating costs increased the most (41.4%). The proportion of enterprises mobilizing from the bond channel dropped sharply from 24.4% to 1.1%.